


Water Lilies

by sue_bts



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mild Gore, Self-Harm, Suicide, just like phil grieving over dan's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:52:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6927211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sue_bts/pseuds/sue_bts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There once was two boys. One was happy, the other was sad. Maybe it was more than just ‘happy,’ maybe it was more than just ‘sad.’ Oh yes, it was much much more. Much more tucked away. Hidden from both of the boy’s own eyes, crammed beneath fingernails to stay hidden. </p><p>Nothing could make them see what was really wrong, not words spoken, or assumptions made, not the clearest of windows, not the whitest of water lilies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water Lilies

**Author's Note:**

> also on tumblr, i forgot to post this 4 months ago, so excuse any mistakes and enjoy!!

_There once was two boys. One was happy, the other was sad. Maybe it was more than just ‘happy,’ maybe it was more than just ‘sad.’ Oh yes, it was much much more. Much more tucked away. Hidden from both of the boy’s own eyes, crammed beneath fingernails to_ stay _hidden._

_Nothing could make them see what was really wrong, not words spoken, or assumptions made, not the clearest of windows, not the whitest of water lilies._

* * *

There are many water lilies, floating over the steady current, their pedals soft, and delicate, they glow in the evening’s light, they shine with bright sorrow. And there, among these such beautiful flowers, Phil lays down his own. They don’t linger by the shore, they don’t stay with him, maybe giving him some level of hope, no, they drift away. They drift, they float, they tease him, even they leave. Now among the others already on their way. 

Leaves go with the flowers on their journey, to contaminate their beauty, to cause disruption and confusion. His are pure white lilies, like snow or vanilla icecream, or pale, perfect skin; the creek’s lilies are a dull, dead, pink. They don’t match. So he tracks where his go. They sway, and shift, and dip below the surface only to reappear. 

And when it starts to rain he barely notices. When tiny droplets hit the stream to splash and ripple, the rings dispersing farther and farther just to run into new ones. And the rain hits him, cold droplets like tiny daggers, staining his coat, his jeans, his pale cheeks.

Phil can’t seem to tear his mind away from his losses. He tries to focus on the creek’s steady flow, or the rain’s ceaseless poring, maybe even on the unfairness of our world, but it’s no use. He’s left here, alone, and the worst thing about that is he can’t stop thinking about how  _alone_  he is. Not just in this park, not jut by this creek, not even on this city’s entire block. But  _alone_  in the sense of how, when he returns home, the house will be empty, and when he calls a certain number the numbers assembled will mean nothing and connect him to nowhere. They’ll be disconnected. How he could think of something strange and tell no one of his thought. How he could eat all the stupid cereal and no one would be there to yell, how he could sing loudly in the shower to have no one tell him to stop because he sounds off key, how he could walk down the street and there’d be  _no one beside him._  How a certain name is just name, it doesn’t have anything behind the meaning, it now has never meant anything. Because people share that same name, and they all mean different things, and now the person he used to know who had that name is gone, and now that name is just another, random, name. Everything it was is now erased. 

And what a painful realization. What a sharp, stabbing, aggravating realization.

He turns away from the river bank, he turns his head down from the rain, he tries to tuck himself away from the bombarding, tragic world. He can’t seem to manage everything swarming him, if its the simple elements of nature around him, or the pins digging their way within his heart. Yes, pins, its nothing hypothetical, but he’s absolutely sure there are pins within him. Maybe he’s bleeding out from inside is chest, maybe his heart tries to continue pumping but is strained and held back, maybe these pins sick out from behind him, through his skin, droplets of blood mixing with rain water. 

Maybe, like many other foolish people, he didn’t even consider how privileged he had been until the absolute pain he is enduring woke him from such a pleasant existence. Maybe he didn’t know how that name, and that collection of numbers, and that person to yell at him when he ate all the cereal, and joined him in his life, maybe that person was just another person to him, and now, maybe, he realizes it was something quite different. It wasn’t friendship, it wasn’t a strong bond, it wasn’t something sappy and unoriginal, it was so much more. It was unique and exotic, and  _there’s_. It was life. It was living. It wasn’t just a meal, it was the garnish set aside on the dish. It wasn’t just a sled, it was the snow that’d accumulate along the edges and get in the rider’s eyes.

It wasn’t just the flowers in the creek, it was those extra leaves that’d fall from the above trees, to travel the journey with them. 

And maybe his tears fall into the creek, maybe they mix with the rain, maybe his blood too, maybe his heart stops beating like he wishes it would, maybe he’s all alone. Maybe he isn’t.

What if he wasn’t dead, what if he came back, what if he reached out his hand and waited for Phil to take it. What if Dan’s skin was made of water lilies. His blood made of the rain. And his skin cold and smooth like a flower petal, and white like the ones Phil left in the current. And what if he didn’t need to explain how he returned, he was just back and it didn’t matter. And what if his heart was beating again, not in the normal way, but in the rhythm of the a pretty song. A pretty song they both could hear, and they danced to it. Right there, beside the water, and under the rain and the falling leaves, and in the dim light, and they danced to such a pretty song. And what if Phil smiled, and Dan smiled back, and their eyes were on each other, and their hands were both undamaged and soft. 

Yet, nothing changes. Not the consistent rain or the water or the lilies or Phil himself. He is still alone and he is still going to be alone forever. And there won’t be another like Dan. There won’t be another chance to make things right.

He’s left here instead. His tears becoming stronger, making his face hot and his cheeks swell. He doesn’t even mind anymore, not the aching in his limbs, the pull of the earth between every hair of his head, not even his loud, shouting,  _screaming_  mind reminding him of his losses. Its all relative to something much stronger in importance. Its his compassion that gets to him. How he doesn’t exactly feel bad for _himself_ , but he endures the pain that Dan must have felt. He puts himself through the pain to understand, to be a bit closer to him; to have a reference. He goes through the pain because its what makes him sane. The pain is the last of him left behind, the last hold Phil has to Dan. Maybe he’s nowhere near Dan’s pain, but he likes to think he’s close. Or close enough.

Or maybe Phil likes to pretend he knows what Dan felt so he can take comfort in understanding. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe the feeling in the pit of his stomach is much lighter than what might have been weighing Dan down. He will never know. He will never have a chance to help, or save things, or save  _him_.

He wishes he did. He wishes he could change everything that happened. Too bad he does’t have a time machine, too bad Dan is dead, too bad he’s waited too long. Phil waited too long after seeing the scars on his arms, waited too long after hearing him in his room in hysterics and the sheets were stained red and he only wore long sleeves, and too long after knowing he was too late.

He was too late for his best friend, for his  _only_  friend, too late before Dan took away the one life given to him.

With the tub,  _red_ , draining the last of his life away, to the sewer, with his wrists split and gaping, his mouth slack, eyes  _dead_.

His eyes were dead like the rest of him.

And Phil had to call people and they had to take him away and Phil had to watch, and now the image wouldn’t go away.

Dan wouldn’t go away even though he was already dead.

* * *

There once was two boys. One was happy, the other was sad. Maybe it was more than just ‘happy,’ maybe it was more than just ‘sad.’ Oh yes, it was much much more. Much more tucked away. Hidden from both of the boy’s own eyes, crammed beneath fingernails to  _stay_  hidden. 

Nothing could make them see what was really wrong, not words spoken, or assumptions made, not the clearest of windows, not the whitest of water lilies.

Not even the purest, prettiest, most  _fare_  of water lilies could survive a cold stream to eventually wipe it out. Not even a water lily could save him from perishing. But he will join them, he will become one as well, and Phil realizes this, Dan always was one in the end. He was just a Water Lily

waiting to float away.


End file.
